


House Calls (And Thin Walls)

by irisbleufic



Series: Meant to Be Here [3]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Romance, Banter, Bisexuality, Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dark Past, Demisexuality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Humor, Jewish Character, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Neurodiversity, New Relationship, Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently), Past Abuse, Pets, Post-Coital Cuddling, Relationship Negotiation, Shapeshifting, Slice of Life, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 12:11:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15630447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: Dirk pushed past [Farah], taking the remaining stairs two at a time.  He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, only to halt in his tracks at the sight of a familiar van.Amanda stood with her elbow propped on the mailbox, leisurely smoking.  She saluted him.“Hey, so,” she said, taking a final drag before pitching the joint, “congrats on accomplishing what every horny, stoned groupie between here and Chicago used to dream of.”





	House Calls (And Thin Walls)

**Did It**

Dirk knew he wasn’t any great shakes in the kitchen, but that was no reason _not_ to pull out the stops on eggs, toast, and tea for the man he loved. Especially on a morning like this.

Todd looked up when Dirk set the plate and mug down beside his laptop on the coffee table.

“You shouldn’t have,” he said, taking hold of the fork, cautiously prodding at his breakfast.

“I solemnly swear I didn’t burn it,” Dirk replied, dropping down beside him on the sofa. “And what are we researching this morning?” he asked, leaning to kiss Todd’s cheek.

“Leads,” Todd said firmly, setting a hand on Dirk’s chest before shamelessly offering his lips.

“Has anyone ever mentioned how fetching you look whilst assisting in pajamas?” Dirk asked.

“Can’t say they have,” Todd said, grinning as he fixed the haphazardly-tied belt of Dirk’s robe. “Do us both a favor and get the mail. Maybe there’ll be something to go on.”

Dirk nodded and got back up, glad he was wearing slippers. He would’ve walked to Canada and back if Todd had asked, but fetching the post was infinitely more manageable.

Farah almost smacked into him on his way downstairs. She had a mess of envelopes in hand.

“Hang on, rude,” Dirk said, halting her on the stairs. “Todd specifically asked _me_ to—”

Rolling her eyes, Farah tapped him on the chest with the letters. “Dirk, chill. I’ll take it to him.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Dirk sighed, unable to remain annoyed for long. “Is it nice out?”

“Oh, it’s something out,” Farah said cryptically, gesturing at the door. “You might wanna see.”

Dirk pushed past her, taking the remaining stairs two at a time. He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, only to halt in his tracks at the sight of a familiar van.

Amanda stood with her elbow propped on the mailbox, leisurely smoking. She saluted him.

“Hey, so,” she said, taking a final drag before pitching the joint, “congrats on accomplishing what every horny, stoned groupie between here and Chicago used to dream of.”

It took several seconds for Dirk to register that Amanda had pointed to the Mexican Funeral t-shirt he was wearing beneath his robe. Once he got that, her statement made sense.

“I, um, guess I did,” he said, offering what he hoped was a suitably cheeky smile. “Thanks?”

Amanda winked at him, banging on the van. “Todd the Ice Princess? Brag. You earned it.”

“Did you actually want to see your brother, or did you just come here to—” Dirk’s mouth caught up with the visual input to his brain, which included Vogel emerging from the back of the vehicle with something tucked under his arm “— _oh_.”

The Beast peered out from the van’s shadowy interior, waving with unbridled enthusiasm. Whatever half-growled assemblage of words she directed at Dirk, it included _Bibbit_ , _happy_ , _sister-in-law_ , _good luck_ , and _kitty_.

Dirk couldn’t help but wonder when she’d learned to pronounce most of those, let alone mastered what they meant.

“She was lost and hungry,” said Vogel, accusingly, handing over a skinny, squirming bundle.

“We sucked somethin’ out of her,” Martin volunteered. “The dangerous part of it, anyhow!”

“ _Shhh_ ,” Dirk soothed, gathering the black cat to his chest. “Your daddies missed you.”

 

**Rest for the Wicked**

Having a lap full of floppy, vet-doped furball wasn’t the best situation to be in when the doorbell rang. Todd shifted Jaws to one side and got delicate teeth to his wrist for the trouble. The cat yowled at him.

“Just as long as you don’t use the heavy artillery, we’re good,” Todd sighed, dashing downstairs.

Farah and Dirk hated intercepting guests. They were too busy bickering over cat-drugs anyway.

Todd opened the door and instantly got a huge, obnoxiously-colored bouquet shoved in his face.

“Hey, is Mona there?” asked the tilted voice on the other side of the flowers. “These are for her.”

“We’re looking for Mona Wilder,” added another voice, apologetically. “Bart, put those down.”

The bouquet instantly swung out from under Todd’s bewildered nostrils, but he still sneezed.

“See, these are yellow,” Bart explained, “because Ken’s phone told us they mean friendship.”

“Nice to hear Siri cooperated, she’s always a bitch to me,” Todd sniffed. “You wanna come in?”

Ken opened his mouth as if to protest, but abruptly shook his head and smiled. “Yes, we would.”

Bart’s running commentary on everything from the carpet on the stairs to the color of the walls made Todd wonder how Dirk had survived adolescence in Blackwing with _any_ idea of how to interact with the outside world. He led them past the sofa, where Jaws was fast asleep.

“Cute lil’ fuzzbutt,” Bart said, following Todd into the kitchenette. “You know she was a killer?”

Dirk screamed and threw the dropper-bottle off which he’d emphatically been reading directions at an unimpressed Farah. He didn’t stop shaking in Todd’s arms until Farah made a big show of accepting the roses and promising she wouldn’t shoot unless Bart did.

“Nobody’s here to kill you,” Ken said, taking Bart by the shoulders. “We want to thank Mona.”

“Dirk, it’s okay,” Todd said, swaying him a little where they stood. “You helped them escape.”

“Well, your timing’s rotten,” Dirk mumbled, his face hidden in Todd’s hair. “She’s being a pen.”

“Then gimme the pen,” Bart said, extending her hand. “I wanna write her a thank-you note.”

Dirk lifted his head and squinted at Bart, but he refused to loosen his determined hold on Todd.

“You want to write her a note with… _her_ ,” he said slowly, baffled. “Did I get that right?”

Bart nodded eagerly. “Yeah, it’s like—more personal? Plus she let me use her in a fight, so—”

“I never did ask what form she took for that scrape,” Dirk said, reluctantly curious. “Cannon?”

“She was literally a machete,” Ken replied in exasperation. “I have several scars to prove it.”

“Y’all weirdos have fun with that,” said Farah, retrieving the dropper-bottle. “Cat needs meds.”

Bart lit up as soon as Farah had left the kitchen, gesturing animatedly between Todd and Dirk.

“They did the thing,” she said, looking to Ken for confirmation. “The thing like in the song.”

“Depends which song,” Todd replied, wondering if she was more perceptive than she seemed.

Dirk ruined the illusion of propriety by nuzzling Todd’s ear, and Bart’s laughter filled the room.

 

**Nom de Guerre**

Dirk filled one house-logo mug after the other, careful not to spill. Farah had paid a small fortune on imported tea just to please him, so even a drop would have been too much waste.

“This is very thoughtful,” Mona said, examining Bart’s note. “I didn’t know I write in blue ink.”

“There was one time you were either out or wrote invisible,” Dirk confessed. “Inconvenient.”

“That must have been a long time ago,” Mona replied, lifting her mug. “Right after I went in.”

“Sometimes I forget how many of us went quietly,” Dirk said, adding sugar to his own tea, “or were admitted by family who meant well.”

“A hidden place to perfect my technique,” said Mona, wistfully. “I regret my early inaction.”

“Let’s not think about that now,” Dirk said, raising his mug. “To friends who were once foes.”

Mona clinked her mug against Dirk’s and then took a sip. “Do you promise they’re not here?”

“Nobody here but us ne’er-do-wells,” Dirk said adamantly. “I told them you need privacy.”

“You are the only person who makes me feel like being a person,” Mona told him, crossing and uncrossing her legs, as if she couldn’t get comfortable. “I saw you with him that night.”

The change of topic was so sudden that Dirk almost spilled tea on the purring ball in his lap.

“Yes, I’m aware,” he said tersely. “We spoke, and that blanket didn’t just cover us by itself.”

“I listen through the walls,” Mona replied, pensively frank. “Easier than having eyes. Is he kind?”

Dirk felt a swell of gratitude the likes of which he’d only ever felt for Todd. She was looking out for him in the only way she knew how.

“He didn’t want me to believe he was,” said Dirk, overcome, “but he’s—Mona, he’s my light.”

 

**Kansas**

Todd cuddled Dirk now that they were awake again, secure in the knowledge that he hadn’t fucked up finally returning the fingering favor. They were definitely getting there.

“What I don’t get,” he said hazily, probably because he had two handfuls of Dirk’s backside, “is how you could climb in my apartment window without help, but not scale a chain-link fence.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dirk yawned contently. “It’s called a fire escape. Anyway, the fence thing was just for show, and it _did_ answer a theory.”

“A theory? That I could, after four days, already be persuaded to do any damn thing you ask?”

“Well, yes, partly that. Also, I suspected your hands would feel _fantastic_ on my arse.”

“I guess you liked it enough to ask for seconds,” Todd said, squeezing Dirk’s cheeks suggestively. “Did you know that, right before you asked me to give you a push, Farah asked me how long I’d known you? She didn’t believe it was less than a week. We gave her the impression we’d been together a few years. And she did mean _together_ -together.”

Dirk frowned at that, the apprehensive look in his eyes appealingly comical at such close range.

“Todd, did you…find me attractive? At that point, I mean? Maybe we should debrief on this.”

“You were annoying as hell, but…yeah, maybe,” Todd admitted. “Hot in a nerdy kinda way.”

“In spite of the unflattering first impression—what with all the screaming—I thought you were really quite handsome,” Dirk replied, sounding smug. “But the bellhop uniform _had_ to go.”

“Is that why you put us in situations where my clothes got ruined and had to come off at every opportunity?” Todd asked. “That explains a lot.”

“Now, that’s unfair,” Dirk protested, kissing Todd’s forehead. “Mine had to come off once, too, and more often than not ended up bloody.”

Todd was in no mood to picture Dirk as gravely injured as he’d been at the Spring Estate.

“For what it’s worth, down there in the puzzle maze, it was nice to see what I’d been groping.”

“I’m amazed you took my _ambitiously fondled_ remark as a joke instead of a come-on.”

“I was too terrified to flirt back!” Todd insisted. “We were constantly five seconds from dying!”

“I’m glad we didn’t die,” Dirk said. “I would never have gotten to kiss you, much less do this.”

“Oh yeah?” Todd asked, teasingly ruffling Dirk’s hair. “Were you making big plans already?”

“At the diner, assuming Farah was about to leave,” said Dirk, quietly, “I was going to ask if maybe you wanted to come back to my place for tea. And I do mean _tea_ -tea.”

“God,” Todd muttered, rubbing Dirk’s back. “They took you instead, and I had my first attack.”

“Leaving your side was a mistake. I didn’t need to end up in Blackwing to make it to Bergsberg. If only I’d stayed put instead of wandering outside like an utter _lunatic_ —”

Todd quieted him with a kiss that lasted more than just a few seconds. Dirk always kissed him like their world was perpetually ending, and that was the sexiest fucking thing ever.

“Thank goodness for Mona,” Todd whispered, stroking Dirk’s cheek, aware that they were both hopelessly aroused again. “Hey, what do you need?”

“Keep kissing me,” Dirk whispered back, pulling Todd tighter against him. “Hold me like this?”

Todd shivered, licking into Dirk’s mouth like his life depended on it. “I can do that all night.”

After a few minutes of serious groping and grinding, Dirk was loud enough that Farah could justify banging on the door. Todd came with Dirk’s name on his lips, laughing and breathless.

“I love you,” Dirk said when he could properly form sentences again. “I love you _so_ much.”

Trying to fix Dirk’s hair was a lost cause, although Todd preferred the absence of ash-smudges.

“Is this what you were thinking when you suggested we move to Kansas and become farmers?”

“I don’t really know,” Dirk admitted, catching Todd’s meddling fingers so he could kiss them. “Chances are I was trying for a _Wizard of Oz_ reference. Not in Kansas anymore, but my brain went and mixed it up with how much I wanted to just _be_ with you.”

“If that’s what you wanted, I would do it,” Todd promised. “Lots of peaceful nothing out there.”

“So, I’m positive I’m not down for letting anyone have my puppies,” Dirk said emphatically, “but I will generously accept your desire to have my kittens. We’ve already got the one.”

“Dirk, I’m pretty sure Jaws is all we can handle,” Todd replied with a sense of mystified relief, “and we made a smart call taking the adoption route.”

Dirk nodded in agreement, reaching across Todd to scrabble at the nightstand. “You’re a mess.”

“Yeah, but you’re a mess, too,” Todd reminded him fondly. “Lucky for you, I’m totally into it.”


End file.
